The Not Yet by Moira Crone

Author:Moira Crone
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781608010776
Publisher: UNO Press

VII

September 12, 2121

Wood Palace on the Sea

Western Gulf De-Accessioned Territory, U.A. Protectorate

We went through winter, spring, and summer with the “Natural” Greenmore. She continued her “research,” insisted she was getting somewhere, having marvelous “excursions.” And we were scared all the time something would happen to her, that she was about to dribble down. Also, she was kind of interesting, a little tiny woman who bustled about along with us, ate at the table, like a bird, but still—spoke in a different voice, had quickness, a different kind of vitality. She was vulnerable, she felt everything. I got to like her that way.

Then, WELLFI found out and stepped in. We got a certified notice. Klamath and Mimi suspected Chotchko intervention. Klamath told us we would all be accused when they saw her stripped like this, eating this way. And what if she wouldn’t go for her Treatments? Heirs left exposed eventually reached a tipping point, different for everyone. Then they deteriorated rapidly, and could not be saved. The judgment went first, he said. As in Greenmore’s case, he implied. “They will twist it all around and say we killed her,” he said. “You are our only hope.” We were in the kitchen at the time, peeling the perpetual shrimp for the East Menteur market, but he turned up to look at me straight on. “You. The only reason she hasn’t leapt into the lake.”

I had no idea what he meant by that.

The same day the messages came from WELLFI, about her Treatment times, I got my first news about the trouble with my Trust, wrote Lazarus for a clarification. No answer.

It was a hot day, muggy, no wind, but a storm was approaching. I’d seen it reported.

Hurricane Horace. I asked Klamath if he’d heard. Of course—he followed the weather closely. Everyone from Chef Menteur had to. A whole team of tropical storms had formed this season, worse than the previous years, he told me. Most collapsed out in the Atlantic, but the last two hit Florida—Fantasia and Gilbert. “And now Horace,” he said, nodding. “They say it is a very organized storm. Not a good sign. Nothing these days is a good sign. So, talk to her, please.”

I finally got up the nerve. I found her on her bed, her tiny body folded up near the top under layers of fabric, mummy-like.

She had a stack of books spread out over the blankets—not those she was always reading, from the dismantled library on Audubon Island that day I last saw Ariel. They were wider, broader, and they had little pieces of paper sticking out on all sides—things stuffed in, markers.

“These are scrapbooks of when I was a Not-Yet, but I didn’t call myself that. I didn’t know I’d ever be Treated,” she said. “This is what I looked like.” She opened one book. I had to sit beside her on a stool to see it.

Flats on paper, fading. A young woman with dusky skin—sort of the kind mine was. Dark, wavy hair. Dark eyes.

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